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In regards to the Higgs Boson, what's the stupidest thing you've seen in the press? Has anything in particular made you really laugh or groan? Has the reporting been overly irresponsible for this discovery process or just the same old press that you're used to?

First time I came across the usage. Thought someone was being dumb, was just me. Thanks.Also today first time came across the new word copyvios (copyright violations, thanks wiktionary).Language is evolving very quickly this week.

Since you're a fan of free software, why don't we see more open data efforts in particle physics? I see headlines like this [nytimes.com] and they're kind of a turnoff. Aside from this super confusing applet [vixra.org] I haven't been able to find torrents of the data available on these tests. Why is that? I mean, as a software developer there is a legitimate effort of folks writing open source software and then there's a legitimate effort of people using that software to accomplish many things and everyone deserves credit. So why are particle physicists so keen on being the collectors and (at least initially) the sole keepers of their data? It would seem to make sense to me that people should be rewarded based on their collection of data and how meticulous and well they do that while any group can consume and derive results from said data. I understand the process has gotten more open but why so slowly? Why not torrent your data to whoever wants it immediately after you get it?

ATLAS generates 23 petabytes of raw data per second. A large computer cluster near the detector identifies which events to store amounting to 100 megabytes per second which is around 1 petabyte of data per year. (Straight from wikipedia)

The actual analysis of the data requires multiple large computer clusters world wide. I believe the data is available to anyone with the expertise and knowledge required to do any meaningful data analysis. Oh and having a spare cluster sitting around with nothing to do probably helps as well.

Particle physics data is not open because of the money, time and effort needed to analyse it. First data would never be released until first analysed by the collaboration - there is no way that you are going to get someone working on building and operating the detector without the reward of being among the first to analyse that data. We are physicists, not engineers.

Secondly analysing the data is a huge effort. You have to understand many varied and subtle detector effects related to how the detector was

Then there is the cost of storing and making available the petabytes of data an experiment like ATLAS generates each year. Who is going to pay for the network, disks, servers etc to make this all available not to mention the development of a simple event format and the processing needed to generate and fill it.

Taxpayers? The same people who funded most of the research in the first place?

I'm a huge supporter of publically funded science, it has provided society with the means to build the modern world and defines our civilizations both past and present. There is also an inate desire in humans to absorb and expand our collective understandiing of nature, in geeks it can become their metaphysical equivalent of their "purpose for being". However the reason taxpayers fund this stuff (willingly or otherwise) is that a deep understanding of nature has turned out to be extremely benifitial to soci

I haven't been able to find torrents of the data available on these tests. Why is that?

The data set is enormous, torrents are mere trickles compared to the amount of data that the LHC generates. Also someone (or some team) who has spent decades on the project to get to the point where data is coming out should (in my opinion) have the right to publish first, provided they do so in a timely manner. Data is the lifeblood of science but the glory goes to whoever is first to analyse it correctly. The LHC is "team science" working on carefully selected questions, independent teams produce and anal

Also, of the tests that were conglomerated to get to the 5 sigma value, how similar were those tests to each other, and how does that speak to the robustness of the results? What I mean is, is this just a glimpse at a corner of something that is jutting out where a corner of the higgs would jut out, or are we seeing more than one corner of it?

So say hypothetically that with this discovery we quickly unify the four fundamental forces of our universe. Does the 'particle hunt' end there? Is there any reason there aren't more fundamental particles -- even ones that might not be predicted by the Standard Model but do exist? If your answer is "no one knows," what is your gut feeling and why?

There are still many questions that can be asked. We still don't understand why there are certain asymmetries in the results of the results of some of the experiments being performed. Both numerical asymetries (e.g. why does X happen more than anti-X?) and geometric asymmetries (e.g. why are the created particles not uniformly distributed over the sphere of all possible directions?). There are also plenty of curiosities, such as why the various subatomic particles have the (ratio of) masses that they do hav

Intuitive physics breaks down, so I'll try the best I can to explain this.

In quantum field theory, stuff goes down differently, very differently. The fundamental things (entities, stuffs) are fields. You're perhaps intimately familiar with one of them, the EM field. And I'm sure you know about wave-particle duality, so this next part may make sense. Photons are thought to be oscillations in the EM field. But of course, go into the details and things get loopy.

This is slashdot, so I'm going to assume I can at least share some "mathy" parts of it (not really the whole thing).

The Higgs Field is represented by two complex numbers. It is a field, therefore, it has a value in every point in space, kind of like how the temperature across the world varies depending on where you are. In that example, the "temperature field", I'd guess, is represented by a real number at every point.

Now remember that each complex number can be written as two real ones given the form:z = a+bitherefore, technically, the Higgs field is not just two complex numbers but it can be thought of as four real numbers. So think of it as being a bundle field with four numbers for each point. Each number, turns out, becomes a particle.

So there are four particles that come out of the Higgs field. Three of them turn out to be components of the Weak bosons (W+, W-, Z_0), as needed to explain why they have mass while photons don't. But there is one field left. This is identified as a new boson, the Higgs Boson.

So, the Higgs Boson is actually just _part_ of the Higgs Field. It isn't like the photon, which is the particle of the whole EM field. Oddly enough, the Higgs Field itself is massless, I think. But the Higgs Boson recieves mass the same way the other three Weak bosons recieved mass, by the Higgs Mechanism.

Really, you can get all woowy with the conceptual part of the Higgs Mechanism but it really is just a neat math trick that I can't really explain here. Essentially, you start with a mathematically description of the particles with mc^2=0 (remember Einstien's equation, E=mc^2 for the energy stored in mass), ie, the particles are massless. After the math trick involving the Higgs Field (not just the Higgs Boson!) you obtain a term that looks like mc^2, so it's like the mass term arises spontaneously without having to put it in there a priori. Hence how we say the particle has "acquired" mass: We started out modeling out particles as massless but all of a sudden, the math tells us it has it.

Despite the reference to the Higg's Boson as the "God Particle" in popular science journals and mainstream media, just how important is this discovery as far as weak interactions, gravity, etc., are concerned? Is this discovery going to change the face of quantum chromodynamics as we know it?

Well, since the Higgs was apparently discovered at approximately the energy predicted by the existing theory my first guess would be no, it won't fundamentally alter the theory that predicted it. On the other hand I seem to remember there were some significant inconsistencies as well (charge maybe? Seems like something was off by a factor of 2 or so). If those inconsistencies prove to be real and not experimental noise, that could be the beginning of some serious re-thinking, especially if none of the c

This was similar to a question I had about the Higgs field. Maybe my understanding of physics is lacking in this area but since higgs gives things mass and gravitational forces are based on mass I'm curious if this discovery could potentially lead to a greater understanding of how gravity works. I also wonder if this discovery gives us any insight as to how we might be able to manipulate the higgs field to say alter the mass of objects leading to perhaps new forms of propulsion.

I read a theory in a Trek novel (one of the early crossover ones I think - Strangers From The Sky?), which explained the arrowhead symbol as a function of mass, energy and velocity. Basically it went something like: as you approach the speed of light, the amount of energy required to push a mass approaches infinity. If you can change the mass to something less than zero, then the amount of energy required to accelerate past C becomes less than infinite, hence attainable.

"This is so far out on a limb, **I have no idea where it will be applied**, We're talking about something **we have no idea** what the implications are and **may not be directly applied for centuries**."

Who ever perfects shooting mass-bearing particles first (i.e. protons and up), will have first dibs on the next generation of particle weapons. Imagine how much more effective a laser would be at destroying things if instead of firing pure energy it was firing a similarly coherent mass beam.

The key to answering this is to look back 50-100 years. In 1912 the atom was a brand new discovery and quantum mechanics was still being figured out. At the time these were highly esoteric and abstract concepts. Applying that knowledge 50 years later was what made the transistor possible and hence gave rise to our modern IT infrastructure. But absolutely none of that was predictable when the discoveries were being made!

Particle detectors and physics of 50 years ago are now revolutionising medicine as doc

Hi AC, thanks for the response. I'd suggest re-reading my question, however. It seems you think I am trying to 'say' that LRC was a bad science investment. I think ALL scientific data is valuable...even erroneous data can be very valuable.

First, I'm asking, not telling here. I'm quoting and asking a question. No bias. I want to know **if** this scientist thinks what you are saying I am saying.

I didn't follow the whole argument, nor did I need to, my comment was simply a key-hole analysis of you not addressing the point actually made in what you quoted with your response to it. It was a textbook example of the "straw man" fallacy, and as such logically unsound. There's nothing more that I can say that wasn't in my prior post, it's about as succinct and to the point as it can be.

My argument was in my prior post . You are clearly too stupid to have understood it. This correlates with the fact that you said something stupid prior to it. In combination with the fact that you're now making stupid posts after it, my only conclusion is that you are indeed terminally stupid.

With every passing news item about particle physics, it seems everyone's pet theory mutates or breaks off into different sects. I read some Brian Greene in high school and have since become a little flustered with string theory... or rather the many variations. The cynic in me fears that any new information on the Higgs Boson (or lack thereof) will result in more not less theories that should unify the four fundamental forces. Could you explain how information on the Higgs (one way or the other) would rule out certain symmetries or models that many people have been theorizing? Can I expect this to at least reduce our set of possible theories and not just provide N more mutations for each existing theory that strives to account for what we just found? Or should I just buckle up for everyone pushing their version through these results no matter what they show?

The initial call for questions included a factoid that I had somehow missed in all the other layman summaries: "He is careful to note that while the researchers '[believe] that this new particle, with a mass 125 times that of a proton, is the famous Higgs boson,' they 'need to study that new particle more deeply in the next months to be conclusive on that.' "

I'm totally not familiar with the details here. For some reason I was expecting that the boson would be a much smaller thing, in the same scale as quarks or even strings, and that other particles including the proton would owe their structures to this. If the Higgs "explains" mass, to me that implies it is responsible for mass. How would you explain the mass of other massive particles like the proton? Or is comparing it to a proton not really accurate?

I'm betting they're talking mass-energy when they refer to the particle's mass, that's the norm for particle physics, and one of the reasons masses are measured in GeV (technically GeV/c^2) instead of molar-masses or something as is done in chemistry.

Basically there are three distinct phenomena that all go by the name "mass" since, in all experiments to date, they are invariant with respect to each other.(1) mass-energy: e=mc^2, how much energy would you get out if you annihilated the particle(2) inertial mass - F=ma, how much an object resists acceleration from a force(3) gravitational mass: f = G * m1*m2 / r^2, this is the gravitational "charge" that determines how strong the force of gravity between objects is, highly analogous to electrostatic charge though much weaker, to the point of being essentially undetectable in particle accelerator experiments.

From what I understand the Higgs field is probably responsible for the latter two, however the first is still an inherent property of the particle itself.

Oh, and incidentally top quarks are actually even more massive at 171GeV, and Bottom and Charm quarks are both pretty beefy at ~4.2 and 1.3 GeV, respectively, versus the puny 2.4 and 4.8MeV of the Up and Down quarks that make up normal matter (which actually gets most of it's mass from gluons) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Classification [wikipedia.org]

The theory is the existence of the Higgs field and calculations predicted that under a set of conditions the Higgs Boson can exist.So this is just one way of confirming the existence of the Higgs field.

Very rough and simple version: When particles interact with the Higgs field they get mass, the Higgs field is related to but distinct from the Higgs Boson. I'm not entirely sure on the details how the two (the field and the particle) are connected though.

Prior to the possible discovery announcement, the LHC was often called one of the last big science experiments of our generation--- big science being a casualty of recession budgets. Do you think this discovery might persuade governments to invest more in big/expensive/multinational investigations?

You can't ever confirm a scientific theory, but you can fail to disprove it.

There are still other theorized particles that no one has directly observed/created in a lab. One such: the graviton. Last I knew, the hypothesized mass of the graviton was prohibitively large (aka: we might need astronomically sized accelerators to generate them in a lab).

Just like you can never confirm the theory of evolution right? Sounds like you really like to just make stuff up and post it. It's theorized that the graviton is massless, but it sounds better to make grandiose statements, doesn't it.

Probably a stupid question but I'm sure others wonder, too: How can the discovered particle have 125 times the mass of a proton when it was discovered by smashing individual protons together? In other words, prior to a proton-proton collision that creates this Higgs-like particle, where was the particle?

I think it has to do with the equivalence between mass and energy, at the fundamental, quantum level.

See, they increased the energy on two protons beyond 125 GeV (where 125 GeV is the energy-equivalent of 125 protons, give or take). In any one collision at that energy there exist a number of possible results, and one such result was a particle with a mass of 125 protons. Via observing how that particle interacted with the universe (for as long as they could observe it) they deduced it's nature and whether i

The Higgs boson is famously associated with how particles acquire a 'mass'. But mass is, in itself, an interesting property. As I understand it, the Higgs boson is only associated with inertial mass. If this is so, do you expect gravitational mass and inertial mass to be always the same? If so, would you speculate on the mechanism that ensures this is true?

There's a slightly fuzzy line between cutting edge science and "hard" science fiction. Do you find this generates noise which distracts from the science, or would you support increased collaboration between science and science fiction?

The likely Higgs discovery would seem to validate Quantum field theory.
Would this then be best described as an ether, only instead of matter traveling through the ether, matter is manifestations of the ether (fields) itself. Would this also than mean that the motion of matter is not a physical movement of a "particle" but instead the transfer of the "excitement" of a field from one spot of the field to another?

And what, if any, implications does this disocvery have for unifying gravity or other areas of physics?

This is a great question, and I wish it had been modded higher. It's related to my question, but I didn't work the 'ether' angle in. Though quantum mechanics already has a kind of ether in the concept of space being foamy (particles popping into existence only to immediately disappear all the time in the midst of otherwise empty space). This just extends that ether so that mass exists as a consequence of it instead of just charge.

As I understand it, a Higgs Boson compatible with the standard model could have been found at a range of different masses, and the search for it has involved searching the possible mass range until it was either discovered or not.

Assuming that this new discovery is indeed the Higgs Boson as predicted and compatible with the standard model, what is the significance of the particular mass that it has been found to have? Are there any macro-scale predictions that depend on its mass?

It is my understanding that the higgs mechanism requires some sort of spontaneous symmetry breaking for the proposed higgs field to yield scalar mass.Is this somehow related to symmetry breaking in other fields in the Standard Model (e.g., Spin0/hypercharge)?

Also, might there be a whole spectrum of scalar properties like mass that might exist from symmetry breaking in other Standard Model fields that might be discovered that could explain currently un-unifyable parts of theoretical physics (e.g., matter/antimatter ratio, gravity, dark energy, etc), but still within the general framework of the Standard Model? Or is the Standard Model essentially doomed with respect to these currently un-unifyable observations?

How do you feel about the fact that a large portion of the CMS was built by recycling military hardware? Do you see it as a sign that the world is finally moving towards peace and that large scientific projects like the LHC are helping it along that path; Or do you find it disappointing that it was the only option to acquire the necessary materials?

I'm curious what's going on such that the top is heavier than the Higgs rather than the other way around. All I've been able to find is people asking why the top was found first. *That* I understand--the Higgs signal is much much smaller. I remember something from long ago about the top's mass "leaking," if you will, to the the lighter particles, but that doesn't mesh with how I understand the Higgs mechanism. Anyway, I would expect the Higgs particle manifestation to be the most massive of those that participate in the Higgs field.

Assuming that this new particle is in fact the Standard Model Higgs boson, what more can we expect to discover with CMS? Is there any new physics you expect to be within the reach of CMS? Or this is pretty much the end?

I know this question is unanswerable, but your best guess would make me happy. I'm actually very worried by the prospects of running out of (falsifiable) theories to test...

This is an IT worker question, not a particle physicist question, so hopefully it's an easy one. How does the Higgs boson come into play when photons, which have a tiny amount of mass, are spontaneously created when a substance like metal gets hot. Is it a direct energy to mass conversion?

...if it is demonstrably incorrect? As far as I can tell, the observation of the Higgs Boson at best simply confirms a model that is fundamentally incomplete, in that the model's parameters have to be set via experimental observation. If the Standard Model has to be tuned to this extent, why do you think the Standard Model is a good guide to truth?

... the answers to the dumbest questions are sometimes the most interesting:) I understand that the Higgs is responsible for giving mass to all the other particles, then it must be *everywhere*. Why is it so difficult to detect? Why does it take such a staggeringly powerful supercollider to find what ought to be as common as the electron or proton?

Also, I can't help but to visualize particles as something like billiard balls while I'm aware they're only mathematical abstractions from our point of view and that experiments like the double-slit experiment refute the billiard-ball model... is there a way to visualize the Higgs to make the answer to my previous question easier to understand?

One press report discussed the idea that the Higgs field might have the same transient existence that the aether did in Electro-Magnetic theory. Do you think there is a field that will interact with the Higgs field to produce an energy transmission function similar to that described by Maxwell's equations?

Please pardon my deep lack of understanding. If any of these questions are worthy please provide your ideas on them.First, I read the following "Just as the electromagnetic field is higher near heavily charged particles, the Higgs field should be higher near heavy particles. For instance, near a Z boson—an object that accelerators should be able to produce in great abundance in the near future—the Higgs field is changed. The Z boson is unstable. When it decays into lighter particles, the disturb

the so-called "laws of physics" are man-made constructs. Many have exceptions or are general guidelines (e.g. Ohm's Law vs. real materials which are not linear and some even have opposite properties of Ohm's law. So we alter the "laws of physics" all the time with new discoveries or better models.